Random musings from a "rabid" reader. The title comes from my admiration of John Updike and his Rabbit Angstrom series.When I read a review of a book I have not read, I only read enough to get a general idea of the content. If it sounds interesting, I make a note of the review, read the book, and only then do I go back and read the review completely. I intend these short musings to convey that spirit and idea to the readers of "RabbitReader."
--Chiron

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Recently, I
mentioned my interest in nineteenth century women writers including George
Eliot.Her greatest work is Middlemarch, the quintessential novel of
the nineteenth century.While
reading the book for that review, I came across a book about Eliot’s wonderful tale of life in the fictional town of
Middlemarch, something like Coventry, England.

Rebecca Mead is a
staff writer for my favorite magazine, The
New Yorker.Eliot’s novel profoundly
influenced her love of reading, and, while she admits to slacking off on the
amount of books she reads, she still has a special, intimate corner of her mind
firmly fixed in Middlemarch.My Life in Middlemarch examines the
qualities of the novel which make it the great piece of literature it has
become.I remember the first time I read
this novel, and I immediately became awestruck by the power of the prose, the
meticulous detail, and the close bond I developed with the characters. Middlemarch
grabbed me by the lapels, dragged me into the nineteenth century, and
introduced me to all the residents there – Jane Austen, Charlotte, Emily, and
Anne Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and, of course, George Eliot.

Born Mary Ann Evans
to Robert Evans, the manager of the Arbury Hall Estate for the Newdigate family
in Warwickshire, in 1818.She lived a
rather unconventional lifestyle for the nineteenth century, and adopted a
male pseudonym.She wanted her fiction
to be taken seriously and separate herself from most female writers of the
century know for light comedies.She
also wanted to shield herself from criticism because of a long-standing affair
she carried on with the married George Henry Lewes, whom she met in 1851.They began living together in 1854 until his
death in 1878.While many Victorians
carried on affairs, Eliot and Lewes scandalized the world because of their open
admission.They considered themselves
married for the rest of their lives.She
died in 1880.

Mead focuses on the
effect the novel had on her from her first encounter with Eliot at age 17.She quotes extensively from the novel,
letters, and contemporary reviews and comments by those who knew George.She also explains her philosophy of books,
writing, and reading.Mead writes, “Reading
is sometimes thought of a s a form of escapism, and it’s a common turn of
phrase to speak of getting lost in a book.But a book can also be where one finds oneself; and when a reader is
grasped and held by a book, reading does not feel like an escape from life so
much as it feels like an urgent, crucial dimension of life itself.There are books that seem to comprehend us
just as much as we understand them, or even more.There are books that grow with the reader as
the reader grows, like a graft on a tree” (16).Rebecca mead and I have a lot in common!

Rebecca Mead

One frequent source
for Mead is Virginia Woolf.Rebecca
writes, “the early works, Scenes of
Clerical Life, Adam Bede, and The
Mill on the Floss, … seem drawn from Eliot’s own rural experience and are
peopled with characters so true to life that readers forget they are fictional”
(45).She then quotes, Woolf, “‘We move
among them, now bored, now sympathetic, but always with that unquestioning
acceptance of all that they say and do, which we accord to the great orginals
only.We scarcely wish to analyse [sic]
what we feel to be so large and deeply human’” (45-46).

I haven’t read Middlemarch in quite a few years, but I
will get back to it soon.If you haven’t
read it, Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch
will surely whet you appetite for one of the most noted authors of the nineteenth
century.5 platinum stars.

When I first
attended grad school at Baylor University, I felt pretty certain my area of
research would focus on 19th century women writers – Austen, the
Brontës, Gaskill, and Eliot.However the
influence of time, tides, and professors I admired, shifted my vision towards
other vistas.Nevertheless, I still have
a great affection for these marvelous story tellers.

Margaret Drabble
holds an exalted place in this coterie of British Women novelists.She has written 16 novels, a collection of
stories, biographies of Angus Wilson and Arnold Bennett, as well as the role of
editor for the 5th and 6th editions The Oxford Companion to English Literature.The dust jacket of her 17th novel
informs me that for her contributions to English Literature, the Queen named
her a Dame of the British Empire in 2008.Her sister is the Book-Prize winning author of Possession, A.S. Byatt.

Drabble is one of
those writers who causes me to pounce on the latest novel.The
Pure Gold Baby did not disappoint.Nellie narrates the story years later.She is a friend of Jessie’s, a graduate student in anthropology, who
finds herself pregnant after an ill-advised affair with one of her
professors.She conceals the name of the
father from all her friends, and decides to raise the child, Anna, on her
own.At first, Anna seems perfect.The child has great beauty, pleasant and
polite personality, and she always smiles. Anna anxiously tries to please not
only her mother, but the circle of friends who enclose Jessie and Anna as a
protective shield.

Drabble writes
detailed descriptions, mixing the ordinary with the unusual, the everyday with
the rare and wonderful.She writes:
“Jess walked towards Enfield Lock and the canal and the River Lee, and then
began to walk, thoughtfully, reflectively, receptively, along the tow
path.Anna liked the water.Anna Jess thought, would like the water
walkway.The lock was old and quiet,
with a stationed narrow boat and a cluster of old buildings from another age –
the dark-brick lock-keeper’s cottage with white fretted wooden gables, a row of
tidy little houses, a pub called the Rifles.Jess sensed there was a historic arsenal connection here, as in
Highbury, a military link, but the waterside this day was peaceful in the
sun.The track was overgrown with elder
and buddleia and nettles, with long greens and purples.Jess walked on and through a gate and over a
wooden stile, and the water flowed strongly.She had left the placid canal bank and joined the path of the deep full
river.A warning notice leaning rakishly
on a rotting board told her the water was deep and dangerous.Small golden-winged birds flew in swift
flurries in a light June breeze through tall willows and reeds.Dark dragon flies. blue-black, hovered and
coupled over the rapidly moving surface.

I learn a lot from her novels.I find myself Googling images of stiles,
buddleia, and dragon flies, along with a healthy scoop of unfamiliar
words.I have 14 of her novels, and I am
reminded the time has come to fill out my collection.The
Pure Gold Baby shows Drabble is still at the height of her power as a
novelist, and clearly deserves -- 5 stars.